This invention relates to an applicator device for food products. The applicator device is particularly adapted for depositing meat products, such as sausage, on a substrate, such as pizza. But it could be used in connection with any extrudable food product for deposition onto any suitable substrate. The substrate may or may not itself be edible.
Commercial preparation of pizza in non-mass production settings such as pizzerias, restaurants and the like typically involves a great deal of manual labor in preparing the dough, applying the sauce and applying the toppings. Application of toppings such as meat, vegetables and cheese is particularly time-consuming. For example, on a high-quality, 16-inch pizza there may be nearly 150 individual pieces of sausage. Training and supervision of staff to get them to apply the desired amount of toppings in an appropriate distribution can be a significant and on-going challenge. Sausage presents special challenges because its consistency in an uncooked state makes it difficult to handle and does not lend itself to quick and even distribution throughout the pizza. Consequently, pizza makers are tempted to develop poor habits to shorten the process, such as putting too little sausage on the pizza or distributing it unevenly or in piece sizes that are either too small or overly large chunks. The present invention addresses these problems by providing an applicator device for applying sausage in the correct amount, piece size and distribution on a pizza prior to cooking it.
While mass production machines are known for the purpose of depositing comestibles on a wide variety of substrates, the high cost of such machines generally makes them unsuitable for pizzerias and restaurants. Businesses of this type are not operating assembly lines making huge quantities of frozen or other products for the mass market. Instead they are generally making, cooking and selling pizzas to order for immediate consumption, either on or off premises. They may make and sell a lot of pizzas but not enough to support the large capital cost of mass production machines operating in an assembly line fashion. An applicator device for the restaurant trade must contend with these economic realities. It has to be relatively simple so its cost is within reach of the restaurant trade.
Pneumatic cylinders are one cost-effective way of effecting the necessary movements of applicator parts. While pneumatic cylinders generally work satisfactorily, they tend to be noisy due to the recurrent release of exhaust air. In the enclosed environment of a restaurant kitchen the exhaust air noise ranges from a nuisance to a genuine health hazard due to its repetitive and loud nature. Various devices for muffling exhaust air noise have been developed, including brass fittings that diffuse the exhaust air. While such fittings work when continually maintained, in a food applicator they suffer from the shortcoming of needing frequent cleaning. In the pizza setting it has been found that grease from sausage or other ingredients tends to collect in the exhaust fittings, eventually clogging them and rendering the pneumatic cylinders inoperative. To prevent clogging the pneumatic system of the machine has to be regularly disassembled and the exhaust fittings removed and cleaned. Naturally there is no convenient time for this to be done so it tends not to get done, leaving the machine vulnerable to outages at the worst possible times. Note that normal, daily cleaning of the food-bearing parts of the machine would not ordinarily include the pneumatic fittings so this is an extra step beyond regular cleaning of the applicator.
Another problem with known applicators is incompatibility between parts in terms of their wear characteristics. Aluminum transfer plates have been used for moving comestibles from one location to another. But such plates create excessive wear on the elastomeric gaskets that seal the intersection between a stationary food hopper and the moving transfer plate. An additional problem with known transfer plates is they have tended to be nearly as long as the frame of the applicator device. Thus when they move the transfer plate extends beyond the ends of the frame. This potentially exposes bystanders to contact with the moving transfer plate and also creates instability in the movement of the transfer plate itself. That is, its motion is not constrained to a perfectly planar movement as the end of the transfer plate can pitch up out of the desired plane of motion. In known applicator devices it has been found the transfer plate can pitch up by as much as an inch and a half. This results in leakage at the seal between the transfer plate and the food hopper and excessive wear on that seal.